This week in TV Guide: October 13, 1962

Tt's quite a  striking cover this week, don't you think? Totally black-and-white except for the flesh tones on Hirschfeld's caricature of Jackie Gleason.* Even the famed TV Guide logo has been stripped of its color.

*By the way, have you spotted "Nina" yet?

It's no surprise that Richard Gehman would take a snarky approach to this article on Gleason, the first of a three-part profile of the star. "One can gauge the depth of his lonliness by how high Gleason flies," is the psychoanalytic subheading to the article. The premise continues as Gehman accompanies Gleason on a cross-country train junket to promote his new variety show.

So what evidence does Gehman use to back up his diagnoses? Well, first of all Gleason likes people - he'll spend five or ten minutes with anyone who asks for an autograph, and during the whistle-stop tour, he personally greets everyone who shows up to see him. He drinks heavily, when he drinks at all - he sometimes stops for weeks or months at a time. He's been known to overindulge in the same way with food. His explanation: "I'm thirsty and I'm hungry."

He loves to hold court for hours wherever he is. most frequently at Toots Shor's in New York. Writes Gehman, "his bombast conceals sensitivity and tenderness, and his leafily prodigal behavior is is rooted in a mulch of loneliness and awareness of the essential tragedy of the human condition." While visiting him at his hope in Peekskill, New York, Gehman observes the other Gleason: more contemplative, moodily musing on his broken marriage, his less-than-ideal childhood (deserted by his father, orphaned by his mother), his hard road to stardom.

I still think that Gehman, in an effort to avoid the fan-mag tenor that the magazine now proudly displays, errs on the side of psychobabble, but there's no denying the power of this paragraph that concludes part one of his profile: "It sometimes occurs to me, as I think of Jackie Gleason sitting there in that voiceless, empty house, that all his activities, his businesses and his productions, his performances and his plans, are no more than ways to erase the dark brown loneliness from which he knows he never will escape. And the same can be said for all that abandoned gregariousness."

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Edith Efron profiles Merv Griffin, and unlike Richard Gehman's article on Gleason, Efron is, shall we say, much kinder. Griffin, at the time 37, is a man of many talents—classical pianist, jazz musician, pop singer, movie actor, composer, game show emcee—and now, waiting for the next phase of his life, he admits "I don't have a fixed image."

His self-image, as it is, is much more positive than it used to be, when he weighed 80 pounds more than he does today. As the weight dropped, his career took off; the novelty song "I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" was a million-seller, after which he met Doris Day and wound up in movies, then met Tallulah Bankhead and wound up as part of her Vegas show, then would up on radio and television, and most recently a four-week gig as one of NBC's substitute hosts on The Tonight Show during the interregnum between Paar and Carson. So impressed with Griffin was NBC that they signed him to a contract for his own talk show, scheduled to begin October 1. That show will last, with a brief break in 1963-64, all the way to 1986.

Colleagues call Merv "warm," "talented," "clever" and "ingenious," and those last two perhaps help to describe Merv's future successes in the business world. There was the real estate deal in Atlantic City where he got the better of Donald Trump, just one of the shrewd deals that made him a major success in real estate. And we can't forget the two game shows that he developed and produced before selling them off for a good chunk of dough: Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! If memory serves, he even wrote the theme to Jeopardy! It was said that when he died, his net worth was $1 billion. In any event, next to Gene Autry, Merv Griffin was perhaps the most successful mogul in show business. And reading this article, we can say we knew him when.

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A couple of big specials provide the highlights for the week. First off, it's Dinah Shore with her inaugural show of the year, Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. (CT) on NBC. Dinah's been associated with NBC for a dozen years, and this will be the first of nine specials she'll do for them this season. This really is a special though, a one-woman show of just Dinah singing with Frank DeVol's orchestra.

Sid Caesar's signed up for nine specials this season as well, and his opener is on ABC Tuesday night at 9:30 p.m. It's another attempt on Caesar's part to reclaim the magic of Your Show of Shows; as is the case with his previous and future attempts, he's never quite able to do it.

Taking a quick look at some of this week's regular variety shows, we find plenty more entertainment. Tony Bennett is the headline guest for the aforementioned Gleason on his Saturday night show (6:30 p.m., CBS); later that night Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music Makers take over on ABC (8:30 p.m.). On Sunday, Ed Sullivan's guests include Connie Francis, Louis Prima and Sergio Franchi. (7:00 p.m., CBS) Tuesday, Red Skelton welcomes Kay Starr and Jackie Coogan (7:30 p.m., CBS), while later that night (9:00) on the same network, Garry Moore has familiar faces Alan King, Nancy Walker and Dorothy Collins. It's an all-star lineup on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall Wednesday (8:00 p.m., NBC): Lena Horne, with jazzmen Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz, as they try out the new Brazilian dance the Bossa Nova* with choreographer Carol Haney. On Thursday, again on NBC (9:00 p.m.), Andy Williams has special guest Martha Raye. Finally, Jack Paar's Friday night show (9:00 p.m., NBC) has husband-and-wife Gordon and Sheila MacRae, Woody Allen, and the Harlem Magicians, a rival of the Harlem Globetrotters. I remember that team; they used to appear on television occasionally, and they were to the Globetrotters what homemade hamburgers are to the ones you get at a restaurant: good, but not as good. When I saw them, they were called the Fabulous Magicians, and their headliner was the great dribbler (and former Trotter) Marques Haynes.

*Don't like dancing?  Don't blame it on me.

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If you'd rather have sports, we've got it. The big game on Saturday's college football Game of the Week (CBS) is a classic: Oklahoma vs. Texas at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. This annual battle is the centerpiece of the State Fair of Texas, where the Cotton Bowl is located. Coming into the game, the Longhorns are flying high, ranked #2 in the country, and they go on to take Oklahoma in a tight defensive game, winning 9-6. Texas will finish the regular season undefeated before losing in the Cotton Bowl Classic, played in this very stadium on New Year's Day; it's the second and final regular season loss for Oklahoma, which finishes ranked #8 before they, too, lose on New Year's, in the Orange Bowl

More football Sunday, although the pro games vary depending on where you live, due to the NFL's blackout rule. If you're in the Dennison area, CBS gives you the Redskins-Cardinals game at noon; if you're in Wichita Falls, you get the Cowboys, playing at the same Cotton Bowl against the Eagles. If you live in DFW, your only choice is the AFL game on ABC, pitting the New York Titans (before they became the Jets) and the Houston Oilers. Otherwise, the week's highlights are ABC's Wide World Of Sports on Saturday afternoon, with auto racing from Trenton and horse racing from Paris, and a middleweight bout between a couple of unranked fighters that night, also on ABC.

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The starlet of the week is actually a bona fide star, Sally Ann Howes, From the British music halls to Broadway to television variety shows and frequent appearances on such game shows as Password, she's become a familiar face to television viewers. This week, the elegant and stylish Miss Howes demonstrates "the beautiful trends for fall."

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Best ad of the week has to be this odd comic strip-style feature for The Lloyd Bridges Show, an unusual anthology series in which Bridges played a newspaper reporter who, each week, would imagine himself in the role of the person about whom he was reporting. Later on it switches to a more conventional anthology, but I find this technique quite interesting. It's not as Walter Mitty as it sounds; more like the reporter trying to picture what must have happened in a given situation. Was he subconsciously testing himself, trying to figure out how he would have handled that situation? Given that the show only ran for one season on CBS, we'll never know. I'm only surprised the cartoon doesn't have a thought bubble connecting him to the scene he's imagining.

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One of the enduring mysteries of life is why we so often behave in a manner that runs contrary to what we say we want. That's no different with television, of course, where people claim to want quality programming while routinely ignoring it when it's offered. Dr. Herbert Kay, Director of the Center for the Study of Audience Reactions, thinks he knows why such things happen.

According to Dr. Kay, viewers drawn to family sitcoms are well-aware of their flaws and shortcomings, but their main reason for watching them is to "escape from crime, violence, brutality, uninhibited sex,* and other unwholesome or unhappy situations." Thus, while fans of such shows may describe them as "down-to-earth" and "true-to-life," what they really want is to escape that very quality, in favor of shows that offer happy endings and morals to the story.

*1962 style, anyway.

On the other hand, and this I find quite interesting given my own predilection for realism on TV, those who denigrate such shows as "trite" and "unpredictable" are drawn to shows that are not necessarily realistic, but "asks him to believe that it's realistic and could happen." Therefore, such a viewer might find himself (or herself) watching a show such as Car 54, Where Are You?—a show that you might consider silly—because it doesn't make any pretensions or try to insult the viewer's intelligence. "Look," it says to the viewer, "we're going to try to make you laugh through slapstick and farce. Take us or leave us on those grounds."

It's always been typical of television executives that as soon as a style or format becomes a hit, imitation will follow. Look at how many different versions of Friends swamped the airwaves, To a point, this is good thinking, because viewers do show a preference for new shows. However, they also put a premium on entertainment and production values, which means that a shoddy or cheap copy will be seen as just that, and sent fairly quickly to the garbage bin.

In short, the message is that while networks are often criticized for offering their viewers the television equivalent of junk food, they're simply acknowledging what they've known for some time now, something that researchers are only beginning to figure out: there's a difference between what viewers say and what they do, and programmers understand this. They've seen the trends, they've looked at the ratings, and they're doing nothing more than giving the viewers what they want.

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Finally this week, a few quick notes from the Teletype section, since we haven't been there lately.

In New York, there's the report that NBC will soon be launching a new Goodson-Todman game show, the five-days-a-week Match Game. Good move—it runs for seven seasons on NBC, then after a hiatus of four years is revived by CBS, where it runs for another six seasons, plus two or three more in syndication.

CBS Reports plans to focus on the current campaign for governor of California, pitting incumbent Edmund "Pat" Brown against former Vice President Richard Nixon. We all know how that turned out; Brown, the father of former Governor Jerry, narrowly edged out Nixon, putting him into political retirement (or not, as the case may be), while Brown, four years later, would confidently predict another victory, this time against former actor Ronald Reagan. With Reagan winning by a margin of nearly one million votes, the laugh was on Brown.

NBC Opera is presenting a new Gian Carlo Menotti composition on March 3. Unfortunately, the Teletype doesn't bother to mention what it is, but thanks to the miracle of the Internet, we're able to tell that it's Labyrinth, not one of Menotti's bigger productions. Unlike his previous works, Labyrinth was never intended to be anything other than a television production, one specifically designed to take advantage of the techniques and opportunities offered by TV. It has never been performed again, but thanks to the miracle of modern technology, that single performance survives, and I wrote about it here.text here TV

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This week in TV Guide: August 16, 1969

Anew era in television begins this week, as Merv Griffin enters the late-night talk show fray with his debut on CBS. (Guests for that first show: Joe Namath, Woody Allen, Leslie Uggams.) Merv's hardly a stranger to the game, having helmed a daytime show on NBC as well as his syndicated chatfest for Group W, but as Neil Hickey writes, things are a little different now.

This is the first time ever that all three networks are programming simultaneous late-night talk shows, with Joey Bishop representing ABC's entry in the "Insomnialand Sweepstakes." And we're not talking about peanuts in this battle-to-the-death contest; Johnny Carson's Tonight Show earned about $15 million for NBC last year. For years, CBS's affiliates had survived on the network's inventory of old feature films, but with prices going up and inventory shrinking, change was in the air; when around 80 percent of CBS affiliates said they'd clear the show in the late-night timeslot, the game—or, in this case, the show—was on. As for the host...

According to Hickey, it was a call from the William Morris Agency to CBS's new late-night boss Mike Dunn that set things in motion. Among the Agency's many clients was one Merv Griffin, currently negotiating a new contract with Westinghouse, and the renewal was far from a done deal. The Agency asked if CBS would be interested in Griffin should he become available. Dunn replied that, yes, he'd be interested. When the Group W negotiations reached an impasse about three weeks later, Griffin's handlers called Dunn back. A couple of meetings later, the deal was set: two years, with an option for six more, and CBS had itself a ready-made show to take on Johnny and Joey.

Merv's not under any illusions about the magnitude of the challenge, but he's also excited. "The biggest drawback to the show which I've been doing for the last four years was its built-in lack of topicality, caused by the fact that it was aired, in some cases, as much as five weeks after we made it." When Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, he says, "we had to just sit there as though it hadn't happened." He wants his staff to "read the front page as well as the theater page," but doesn't want propagandizing. "The fewer personal causes I exploit on the air the better the show we'll have." It's the guests he's interested in, and their areas of expertise. "These shows should reflect the whole contemporary scene: comedy, ideas, music." He's not going to let himself worry about the competition, either. "If I let myself pay too much attention to the competition, I risk falling into a tererible trap. I can't let them affect how I do my own show."

There's a very interesting comment made near the end of the article by a CBS executive. "Nobody knows how long Carson is going to work," he says. "He shows signs of wanting to do something else. When he does quit, NBC—which has enjoyed this lush oasis for so long—will suddenly be in the same position we were. Griffin will get a large chunk of Carson's audience and some of Bishop's." The truth, as Hickey concludes, is that nobody knows. And ain't that the truth. Carson, of course, is not near quitting; he'll continue another 23 years, to 1992. By that time Bishop is long gone—he won't even make it out of 1969. Merv is absent the scene as well; as Griffin's comments suggest, he wanted a topical show with topical, and often controversial, guests, and soon chafes under the restrictions CBS attempts to put on his show. He secretly negotiates a deal with Metromedia to return to syndication as soon as CBS cancels his show, which happens in 1972. That edition of The Merv Griffin Show continues until 1986, when Merv finally hangs it up. Maybe he doesn't beat Carson, but he certainly leaves the scene unbowed.

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Speaking of the late-night wars, 1960s style, if you're into this kind of thing then this is your week! Not only do we have Johnny, Joey, and Merv slugging it out in the post-local news period, we also have Dick Cavett! Yes, in the timeframe between Cavett's morning show and his anointing as Joey Bishop's successor, during the summer of 1969, Cavett hosts a three-nights-a-week show for ABC. As such, on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday of this week, you have all four of my generation's late-night titans appearing on the same evening, three of them at the same time. It's really quite extraordinary when you think about it. And if you lived in the right market, you could also have seen Steve Allen's syndicated show. If only someone could have found a place for Jack Paar—wouldn't that have been a time!

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We spend a lot of time here looking at woman's fashions, so it's only fair that this week we get a glimpse at Hollywood's "wild" new look for men.

It grooves, doesn't it? Our models are, from left to right, Stan Freberg, Robert Wagner and Robert Culp, three men with reputations as being among the most stylish dresers in entertainment. Dick Hobson gathered the three of them, plus Sammy Davis Jr., to see how they feel about the new styles. Wagner admits to the truth of his publicist's statement that he has "the most impressive wardrobe on the tube"; Culp concurs, saying that Wagner "always looks elegant," but says Davis is "the only cat I'd call a style leader." Not surprisingly, Freberg bosts of the most flamboyant outfits, living up to his daughter's description of him as "a groovy daddy." The formula: "An Edwardian suit with a dragoon collar. Or my Cardin suit with a sculptured back—a real mindblower. I have a Bill Blass blazer with his initials monogramed all over the lining, which is a little ostentatious of him, don't you think, considering it's my coat." He does have his limits, though: "The bell-bottom is a little too faddish for me."

As for other favorite outfits: Davis is proud of "Two mink coats and a mink cape and three pairs of doeskin boot-pants." The boots and pants are all one piece? "Yeah, you put them on just like a regular pair of pants. The gas is to casually put your leg up and people say, 'You mean they're all one?" Wagner boasts of starting the Cassini Nehru look; when Culp suggested that Tony Randall actually ntroduced the Nehru to America on the Carson show, Davis interjects, "No, I brought it from Paris and it wasn't called the Nehru; it was called Mao jacket. Because of politics, you wouldn't use the word Mao so I said it was a Nehru." Davis adds that "I came back from London three years ago wearing beads, and people said, 'Beads?' Within six months everybody was wearing beads." Freberg says that at first he felt a little self-conscious; "A year and a half ago I went on the Tonight show wearing what I thought was a wild Eric Ross jacket until Tony Curtis came on with Edwardian lapels, a whole row of military medals and high knee boots. Everybody applauded."

Yes, boys and girls, this is what the state of men's fashion looked like at the end of the Sixties. But there are some more traditional styles that the men admire: Wagner likes Cary Grant ("He never had to bother with an expensive wardrobe because he wears clothes so well that the suit that looked well on him in 1939 still looks well on him."), Culp admires Johnny Carson (he "has a fabulous influence, though nobody has ever accused John of being adventurous."), Davis loves Fred Astaire ("Tails on Astaire look as comfortable as tennis shoes, Levi's and a T-shirt."), and they all agree that while Sinatra has loosened up from his investment banker look, Davis tells of how he once kidded the Chairman that "You're dressing like you're known all over the world," to which Sinatra replied, "Well?"

I love clothes myself; I never went for ascots and Nehru jackets, although I'll admit to a couple of leisure jackets in the day, but I've always been most comfortable in a nice three-piece suit or double-breasted jacket with dress boots, and I only wear a white shirt to weddings and funerals. My one regret is that I've never had the opportunity to wear a tuxedo; they say a tux looks good on every man, and at this stage in my life I'll probably never get the chance to find out. But a classic wardrobe is still timeless—I'll let you decide if the outfits above fill the bill.

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As far as TV goes, summertime is reruntime, but that doesn't mean we can't still have a blockbuster. That's the case on Sunday, when NBC repeats Elvis Presley's historic comeback concert (8:00 p.m. CT), first shown the previous December. It was the King's first television appearance in eight years, and it's proven to not only be one of the definitive moments in Presley's career, but a riviting hour of television. In the rerun vein, Saturday night's Jackie Gleason Show (6:30 p.m., CBS) shows how far the Honeymooners have come from their half-hour roots; in this hour-long musical-comedy episode, "The Honeymooners visit sunny Spain, where Ralph rushes to the rescue of a lovely senorita—and finds himself entangled in a blackmail plot." It's part of the story arc in which the Kramdens and Nortons have won a trip around the world; the elements are there, in that it would be typical for Ralph to get in over his head with some complicated scheme. But it seems a long way from that New York tenament, doesn't it?

On Saturday and Sunday (4:00 p.m.), ABC presents third- and final-round coverage of the golf season's final major, the PGA Championship, from National Cash Register Country Club in Dayton, Ohio. (Yep, you read that right.) The tournament "offers a mouth-watering $175,000" in total prize money (2019's total purse: $11 million). and Ray Floyd holds on, despite a final round 74, to defeat Gary Player. Proving that political controversy is no stranger to sports, civil rights and antiwar protestors disrupt the third round, throwing a cup of water in Player's face and trying to grab Jack Nicklaus's ball off the green. "The tournament continued in a sinister cloak-and-dagger atmosphere," according to the Associated Press. "Small groups of long-haired characters in hippie attire were seen congregating at various places. Police milled through the crowd." Player double-bogeyed the hole where the water was thrown at him; he lost by one shot. Rounding out the weekend sports scene, WTCN is the flagship for Minnesota Twins baseball, as the Twinkies take on the Washington Senators (noon both days) from Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, which just last year was known as D.C. Stadium.

Liberace is back on network TV with his own summer replacement show (Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., CBS) and his guests are Eve Arden, Mary Hopkin, Matt Monro, and ventriloquist Ray Alan with his dummy Lord Charles. That's on opposite It Takes a Thief (7:30 p.m., ABC), in which we get to see Robert Wagner and his fabulous wardrobe accompanied by a cast of unlikely guest stars: Joey Heatherton, Paul Lukas and Barry Williams. And at 8:00 p.m., "A black district attorney and a white cop are men at odds" in the TV-movie Deadlock, which winds up as "The Protectors" segment of The Bold Ones. We also get part two of a CBS News Special on the generation gap (9:00 p.m.); last week's first segment was called "Fathers and Sons," this week's follow-up is "Mothers and Daughters." The producers express the hope that viewers will watch the troubled families and take consolation in knowing they're not alone; executive producer Ernest Leiser says, "The only way to bridge the gap is with mutual compassion."  Thursday's episode of Ironside (7:30 p.m., NBC) strikes me as a prescient one. "Ironside is caught in a racist crossfire when he's ordered to prove the innocence of a Negro militant accused of a riot murder. White extremists want to set an example; black extremists claim it's a frame." I wouldn't want to be the Chief in this one.

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This week's starlet is 22-year old French pop singer Mireille Mathieu, the girl who none other than Maurice Chevalier calls "A little queen [who] has come out of the peoplpe, to be workshiped by those who like French songs." Having made it big first in France and then the rest of Europe, she's now in the process of making it in the United States, doing the circuit with Ed Sullivan, Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin and Danny Kaye. Her agent, Johnny Stark, places her in high company, along with such French icons as Chevalier and Edith Pief, but to do so she will need to become both a singer (which she is) and an artist (an area in which she continues to evolve). And she has to be accepted in the U.S. as she is elsewhere.

Back in the day, it was possible to charm an audience by singing in a foreign language; after all, Piaf herself did it with "La Vie en Rose." But, Mathieu tells Robert Musel, she is determined to master the English language. "I cannot sing in English with the emotion I feel in French because the words do not mean as much to me. This makes me dissatisfied because I want the Americans to hear me at my best." She plans to remain in England after the end of her television series with John Davidson (Fridays, 7:00 p.m., ABC) "until I learn English really well." "When I talk with John on the show, I have to read the English from cards phonetically."

Music styles change; in the years since, the type of song Mireille Mathieu sings has waned in popularity. She never really became big with English-language songs, and never reached the heights of Chevalier or Piaf, but she's remained popular in France, Germany, and Russia, among other countries. And the 75 albums she's recorded, most recently in 2015, are 75 more than I've managed.

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The original logo for PBS, using the colors
of its predecessor, NET

What's in a name? We're not sure, but The Doan Report tells us that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, about to begin its first full season of broadcasting, is haggling over just what the new network is going to be called. The preferred name—Public Broadcasting System—is thought by some to sound too corporate, too "centralized," which is just what they don't want to employ, since much of the network's content will be provided by local stations for local stations. ("Besides," says one official, "it may sound too much like CBS." Would that they could get CBS's ratings, though.) Then there's the Public Broadcasting Network, but "the word 'network' is thought to be anathema these days to many congressmen." As we all know, they never did come up with a good alternative, and PBS it is, to this day. And still without CBS's ratings.

NBC, meanwhile, has announced plans for 100, count 'em, 100 specials for the 1969-70 season. There are so many, in fact, that Doan acknowledges the risk that the frequent preemptions may run the risk of antagonizing fans of NBC's hits, such as Laugh-In and Bonanza. I'm not getting too worked up about the specials, though; we're talking about things such as Christmas specials from Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Bing Crosby (plus a repeat of The Little Drummer Boy), standards like the Miss America Pageant, and an all-star circus with Tony Curtis, who can do a few acrobatic stunts himself. In other words, fun, maybe, but not too many "special" specials. Your mileage may vary, though, depending on how much you like the stars.

And the Teletype reports that "A specially set up network will carry Jerry Lewis's annual Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day telethon for 22 hours on Aug. 31. Last year, Lewis, who has been national chairman of the charitable organization for 18 years, raised $1,400,000 on the telethon." The all-time record, set in 2008, is $65,031,393.

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Last but not least, for all you youngsters out there, one of the catchphrases of the post-Apollo 11 era was, "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't," followed by your favorite description of some worthy but insurmountable task, e.g. "We can put a man on the moon, but we can't figure out how to feed the hungry." Subconsciously, it was not so much a complaint about things that needed to be done (although it was certainly that), as it was a reminder of how monumental the moon landing was, and how unthinkable it had been for so long. I don't know what its equivalent would be today, since continuous technological achievement is more or less taken for granted, but you get the point. So did Susan Biles of Waterbury, Connecticut, who, in this week's Letters section, reminds us of something else we take for granted nowadays. "I can watch the fantastic live transmission of the moon walk," she writes, "but I cannot receive a local channel 24 miles away. Ah, the inconsistencies of life!" Indeed, Ms. Biles, and were it so that this could be our biggest complaint today. TV

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This week in TV Guide: June 12, 1965

WI suppose I was about five, the year this issue came out, that I received a book from my mother. It was an illustrated version of "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!", the hit song by comedian Allan Sherman. I loved both the song and the book, and for many years this was how I knew Sherman—this and the other novelty songs he did, many of which were pantomimed on the beloved Twin Cities children's show Lunch With Casey.

But I digress. As I say, it wasn't until much later that I found out Sherman was also a game-show empresario of sorts. As he describes this week in an excerpt from his autobiography, A Gift of Laughter (which might be worth tracking down some day), he and his partner, Howard Merrill, created the show I've Got a Secret, which they then sold to Goodson-Todman Productions for the princely sum of $1, with the proviso that if the show made it to air they would each receive a weekly royalty of $62.50, and Sherman was named Associate Producer, receiving an additional $125 a week. (A few years later, Sherman notes, Goodson-Todman sold I've Got a Secret to CBS for three million dollars.) 

Lest you think creating a game show concept is all fun and games, it was neither for Sherman; as he puts it, "After all those months of taking out the bugs, we had a regular insectarium on our hands." Sherman frankly admits that the first show was a disaster, and that the "secrets" that they created for celebrity guests were insipid. This came to a stop around the time that actor Monty Woolley's secret was disclosed to be that he slept with his beard under the covers. Asked by Henry Morgan whether this was really true, Woolley shouted, "Of course not, you bloody idiot. Some damn fool named Allan Sherman told me to say it." 

And then, there was the president of one of the sponsors, Prom Home Permanent, who kept meddling with the lineup of the panel. He was "violently" opposed to Laura Hobson, Nina Foch and Faye Emerson, because they all had straight hair. "His idea of the perfect panelist was Harpo Marx."

Sherman also tells of when Sir Edmund Hillary became the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest. Figuring he'd never have a better guest, he told his Production Assistant Adraia to get him on the phone." Where? she asked. "At the top of Mount Everest," he replied. "It had never occurred to me that there might not be a telephone booth at the top of Mount Everest." As it turned out, she was able to get through to the bottom of Mount Everest, where she was told Hillary was expected back in a month. "Too late!" Sherman shouted. Tell them we need him now!"

Frankly, I don't believe this story, or at least I suspect Sherman embellished it for effect, and that effect is very effective indeed. He goes on to share Mark Goodson's mania for memos (when Sherman complained that Goodson would "exhaust the world's supply of paper" if he didn't desist, Goodson replied by memo. Bill Todman wasn't any better; Sherman's request for a raise had to wait until Todman finished a call to Henry Ford to have a Lincoln Continental made to order; Todman then told Sherman that while he wouldn't give him a raise, he had something even better: a promotion from Associate Producer to Producer. 

Whether or not any of this actually happened doesn't really matter, though, because it's entertaining, and Allen Sherman is an entertainer. This book might be worth tracking down some day. In part two of this article, he promises to tell us of the day when he finally got a secretary, and he spent that weekend wondering if she'd be blonde, slinky, with a throaty voice and exotic perfumes. That is, until he got to the office on Monday and met his new secretary, Roger Peterson. 

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premiere variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup.

Sullivan:  Ed's live this week, with comedian Sid Caesar; comics Allen and Rossi; French pop singer Jean Paul Vignon; British rock 'n' roller Tom Jones; comic London Lee; singer Dee Dee Sharpe; the Seekers, folk singers; and the Wychwoods, an illusionist act which uses 14 trained poodles.

Palace:  We’re in the rerun zone at the Palace this week, with host Arthur Godfrey welcoming comedian Shelley Berman; songstress Dorothy Collins; singer John Gary; the comedy team of Gaylord and Holiday; Dwight Moore and His Mongrels; juggler Eva Vidos; and the Dalrays, comic acrobats.

Let's see: dog acts? Check. Comedians? Check. Comedy teams? Check. Singers? Check. Each show has ticked the boxes this week, which leaves us to look at the personalities.  Shelley Berman can be very funny, Dorothy Collins is easy on the eyes, and John Gary has a smooth voice. On the other hand, you have the Ceasar of comedians, and Tom Jones is still going strong! So it's not unusual for Sullivan to be the winner this week.

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Throughout the 60s and early 70s, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever we get the chance, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

This week, Cleveland Amory is conducting what we might think of as something of a self-review, in which he takes a look back at some of his reviews of the past season about which, in his words, he's had "second thoughts" For, as he says, "One cannot re-review the past season without coming to grips—and possibly even stagehands—with the show which, ratings or no ratings, has become the biggest thing since Amos 'n' Andy." 

That show would be Peyton Place, and while Cleve was taken to task by many over his favorable review of the program, there's no question that everyone was talking about it. He still has one criticism, though: the pace. "The show has an irritating habit of making a federal case out of every conversation. At the wedding, for example: Rod: 'Your mother looks—beautiful.' Allison: 'You were going to say "happy," weren't you? Why didn't you, Rod?' Rod: 'Why didn't I say "happy"? Why didn't I, Allison? I don't know.' Etc, etc." And speaking of Allison, "If she can't get another emotion—or even another boy friend—would it be too much to ask for her to get another speed?"

Amory also offers praise for the best performances of the year: Jim Nabors and Frank Sutton were standouts on Gomer Pyle, as were Elizabeth Montgomery and Dick York on Bewitched. He also mentions a "splendid quartet" in serious drama: Richard Crenna (Slattery's People), David Janssen (The Fugitive), Vic Morrow (Combat!), and Robert Lansing (Twelve O'clock High).  

In late night, Amory's discouraged by the failure of ABC's Nightlife, which he calls a "monument to futility," which started out with Les Crane, and adds that "even when they did finally come up with the right man, Dave Garroway, they didn't seem to know it." And he laments the absence of new faces in the news, with the exception of ABC's Peter Jennings, and the lack of commentary on network news (specifically citing NBC, but it could apply to all three). However, let us not end on a down note. There were three bits of good news: the real possibility of a fourth commercial network, the growth of educational television, and the best news of all: CBS has a new president. James Aubrey is dead, long live James Aubrey.

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We're always looking for good, or interesting, programs during the summer rerun season, and we've got several this week.

Secret Agent is still in first-run on American television, and Saturday's episode is one of particular interest, especially for those who debate whether or not John Drake became Number Six. "Colony Three" (8:00 p.m., CBS) is, as one author put it, "a fascinating anticipation of The Prisoner." The premise: "Drake assumes a new identity and joins a group of defectors about to be transported to a training school for spies in Eastern Europe."

On Sunday, ABC presents the third installment in their Daring Americans series, "Assault on Le Mans" (6:30 p.m.), portraying American Grand Prix champion Phil Hill, one of the greatest racing drivers of the 1960s. Hill was the first American, and the only native-born one, to win the World Driving Championship. Now he's at the fabled Le Mans, a race he's won three times in the past. His teammate in the 24-hour race is Bruce McLaren, as they drive for the upstart American Ford team, taking on the legendary European powers, particularly Ferrari. Hill and McLaren don't win; as a matter of fact, they dropped out after 192 laps. But two years later, Ford would topple mighty Ferrari, the legendary Ford GT taking first, second and third. The documentary is done in cinéma vérité style by Robert Drew Associates, which famously did several similar documentaries on John F. Kennedy, including Primary.

As we move into reruns, Monday's Ben Casey (9:00 p.m., ABC) presents a story that, for all the complaints scriptwriters have about not being able to tell adult dramas, probably wouldn't have been told even five years ago. In "A Disease of the Heart Called Love," Shelley Winters plays a divorced, middle-aged nurse who becomes pregnant. She's also got a medical condition that makes her pregnancy dangerous. Casey and Zorba advise her to "terminate the pregnancy," but she wants to keep the baby. So this touches a number of buttons: unmarried mothers, abortion, the loneliness of the unmarried. They don't get much more adult than that. It's directed by Mark Rydell, and features Milt Kamen and, as Dr. Watson, James Doohan.

Tuesday features one of those how-many-times-has-this-happened-to-you moments on The Fugitive: (9:00 p.m., ABC): "When a philandering husband is found murdered, the chief suspect is his girl friend Lucey Russell. But Lucey has an alibi: she was with Kimble." I did a bit on this many years ago, where I looked at the typical tropes of typical series and wondered just how many times they actually happened to ordinary people. This one is a little better, though, in that you don't have to be relying on an escaped convicted murderer to provide your alibi; it could be someone cheating on their spouse, someone who called in sick to work, or any number of people who wind up in the wrong place at the wrong time doing something they shouldn't be doing. I think it's called karma.

I'm going off the primetime grid for Wednesday's choice: Stanley Kubrick's terrific noir The Killing (10:30 p.m., KMSP), with Sterling Hayden leading a gang planning a race-track robbery. The gang includes Vince Edwards, who was Ben Casey on Monday night; Elisha Cook, Jr. as a very nervous teller working for the gang on the inside; and Marie Windsor as the dame who does him wrong. Based on this movie, Kubrick and his producer, James Harris, got the chance to make a movie for MGM: Paths of Glory. That was a pretty fair movie, too.

Thursday's repeat episode of The Defenders is "Blacklisted" (9:00 p.m., CBS) with Jack Klugman starring as a formerly blacklisted actor whose comeback is being threatened by a "vigilante" group trying to get him fired. So we have Klugman, one of the most intense, scene-chewing actors around; we have McCarthyite villains in the "vigilantes" trying to prevent a decent man from earning a living; and we have The Defenders itself, one of the more strident, issues-oriented programs on the air.

In fact, the episode is quite good. Klugman is, for the most part, well within himself as a man who shows his regrets not by what he says or does, but by what he keeps inside him. Your opinion of the episode is going to be based in large part on your opinions of the blacklist, the Red Scare, and everything that's happened since.  The Defenders was one of the quality programs of the early 60s, a series that wasn't afraid to take on serious issues. Its flaw, and it was a major one, was when it stepped over the line into strident advocacy, as it increasingly did in later seasons. But decide for yourself—you can see it here.

On Friday night, ABC turns its attention to gambling in another amusing documentary, as host Terry-Thomas takes a humorous look at "the urge to gamble" in Everybody's Got a System. (7:30 p.m.) The show visits horse racing tracks in Europe, talks to bettors and bookies to learn about the sport's attraction, visits a bingo parlor to see how even small-scale gambling can thrill, and visits the casinos, where Thomas explains his own "system" at the roulette wheel. It seems lightweight, but a fun show, not unlike something you might see on History or A&E today.

Also on Friday, Jack Paar's in London for this week's rerun (9:00 p.m., NBC), with a stellar cast of his own: the legendary Judy Garland, the very witty Robert Morley, and the distinguished journalist Randolph Churchill, son of the late Winston. I've seen clips of this on one of the Paar compilation videos, and it's very funny—particularly this bit where a slightly tipsy Judy has some fun at Marlene Dietrich's expense:

Oh, and she can still sing a bit, too. What a sad, sad life she led.

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Fashion alert: it's time for another starlet to display the latest in haute fashion.  This time it's actress Janet Margolin, who will go on to a successful career with appearances in media as varied as Woody Allen movies, a Ghostbusters sequel, and episodes of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote.  But never mind that—her mission this week is to show off the newest craze, the Finnish Marimekko, made famous by Jackie Kennedy.

Janet Margolin died of cancer in 1993, not quite 30 years after this issue.

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James Arness is so big (besides being 6'7", that is), he even dominates this week's profile of Milburn Stone, who plays Doc on the long-running Gunsmoke. Stone remembers the first few years working with Arness, and he wasn't impressed: "He'd be late or wouldn't show up—never apologize. And once he was there he'd clown around." When Stone couldn't take it any longer, he lit into Arness at a rehearsal, telling him that he didn't belong in the business, and added that "I've read my contract and there's nothing in it that says I have to put diapers on you or wait for you. And if you ever show up late again, buddy, you'll have two things to explain—not only where you were, but where I went!" To Stone's surprise, Arness took the tongue-lashing like a man, telling him that "You're absolutely right." "From that moment on," Stone says, Arness changed, becoming the consummate profession we've read about in TV Guide. "I began to love that guy. He's a great big wonderful cub bear."

I watched Gunsmoke when I was a kid, primarily because my grandfather did, and although I wouldn't rank it as a favorite it was a memorable show nonetheless. The byplay between the main characters—Matt, Doc, Festus and Kitty, and the obvious chemistry between the actors playing them—is the glue that held the show together, and watching it in reruns today confirms the quality of the program.

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Finally, on this longer-than-usual entry, a brief mention of Edith Efron's profile of Gig Young. Young is an acclaimed stage and movie actor, and his career will end with three Oscar nominations (and one win) to his credit, but in this issue he's talking about his current series, The Rogues, in which he stars along with Charles Boyer and David Niven. I bring this up because this article, which I read some years ago now, was the first time I'd read about The Rogues, a series about a family of good-natured con artists making a living out of swindling people who deserve it. According to the reviews, there is a sense that The Rogues is too literate, too clever, for the average viewer who wants his television without having to think about it.

I first saw The Rogues a few years ago on MeTV, and I was absolutely charmed by it. It's a show that desperately deserves a commercial DVD release (although you can get copies if you know where to look); it's better than Leverage, more humorous than The A-Team, and not nearly as complicated as Mission: Impossible. And since it is a series, unlike The Sting, you get to see it every week. It should have run for more than one season, and if you ever get the chance you should give it a try. I will be surprised if my readers aren't as charmed by it as was I.

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This week in TV Guide: January 4, 1969

For our first TV Guide of 2026, we look back to the first issue of 1969. After one of the worst years in the nation's history, people must have looked forward to a new year with a mixture of relief (it has to be better, right?) and trepidation (that's what we thought last year). 

So what's new this week? Well, there's a fourth national network, for one thing. Richard K. Doan reports that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is creating a hookup for 150 noncommercial stations to facilitate receiving a unified broadcast schedule. In the past, National Educational Television (NET, the predecessor to PBS) had shipped many of these programs from station to station on film or tape. It is hoped that this will make it easier to promote public television on a national basis. A recent study indicates that ratings for public broadcasting shows are down by an "alarming" amount over the past three years, with the exception of cities such as Boston and San Francisco, where such programming is heavily promoted. Another survey shows that the most watched series on public television may be David Susskind's syndicated talk show Open End, which in fact is not a CPB program at all, but is merely a program picked up by some public broadcasting stations. (Many stations choose to classify it as "educational," which in fact it probably is, when compared to what airs on PBS nowadays.)

In fact, Doan says, the whole situation begs the question—several, in fact:

• If public television, which is supposed to act as an alternative to commercial broadcasting, has so few viewers, does the nation really need to invest in this? Does the public want such an alternative?
• On the other hand, has public television lacked the funds to do the kind of "quality" programming that viewers want?
• OR, does the quality already exist, but goes unseen because of the lack of advertising and promotion?
• Otherwise, why has the government earmarked $5 million for programs that the public apparently doesn't want?

You know, I'm not sure we even have the answer to this today.

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During the 60s, the Ed Sullivan Show and The Hollywood Palace were the premier variety shows on television. Whenever they appear in TV Guide together, we'll match them up and see who has the best lineup..

Sullivan: Tentatively scheduled guests: Johnny Mathis; singers Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Shani Wallis; composér-conductor Henry Mancini; comedians Rodney Dangerfield, and Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber; and the Rolan Brothers, novelty act. (The episode guide notes that the Pter Gennaro dancers also appeared, and that the audience bows came from Jack Lord and Jean Claude Killy.)

Palace: Palace begins its sixth year as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope receive the first annual show business Hall of Fame Awards. Bing is also the host; his guests are Tiny Tim, Bobbie Gentry, Judy "Sock It to Me!" Carne of Laugh-In, comic Stu Gilliam, the acrobatic Dovyeko troupe of the Moscow State Circus and columnist Earl Wilson, who presents the awards.

It's always hard to go against Bing Crosby, and doubly so when he's joined by his old partner, Bob Hope, for the first (and last?) Show Business Hall of Fame Awards. (You can see a clip of that here.) However, let's be honest: Diana Ross and the Supremes, Johnny Mathis, Henry Mancini, and Rodney Dangerfield. You're just not going to beat a lineup like that. My decision: Sullivan kicks off the new year right.

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From 1963 to 1976, TV Guide's weekly reviews were written by the witty and acerbic Cleveland Amory. Whenever they appear, we'll look at Cleve's latest take on the shows of the era. 

A show that you don't hear about much anymore, but one that still has a loyal following if the interwebs are to be believed, is The Name of the Game, which Cleveland Amory reminds us was billed as television's first "motion-picture series." It featured a rotating cast of stars, headed by Gene Barry as the head of an international publishing empire, with Robert Stack as editor of Barry's crime magazine, and Tony Franciosa as Barry's chief investigative reporter. The show is big, big concept—and has a 90-minute running time to boot. The advantages to such an arrangement were obvious, in that by having three stars alternating each week, the producers would have as much as three weeks to shoot each episode. Good idea, right? Except, says Cleve, for "one small detail. They forgot to get another good idea—one for the show itself."

One of the show's problems lies in the viewer having to figure out which side he was supposed to be on as he watched. "Most of the episodes so far have been, from opening tease to final wheeze, so crammed full of false values and phony status standards that, as movies, they move all right, but as far as moving you goes, our guess is that it will be primarily to turn them off." And that's too bad, because no show on television can match the star wattage of the guest lineup on The Name of the Game, even though most of them get shot ("from their good side, of course") before they can make much of an impact. "Even so, and hard as it is to believe, they were all overwhelmed by a sea of muddy melodrama and messy, unmotivated characterization." 

As far as the stars (i.e. the good guys), we haven't seen much of Franciosa so far ("apparently he not only alternates but hibernates, too"), but Barry and Stack have two expressions between them. "Barry is better than Stack, but that is still a long way from a compliment." And Susan Saint James, the only character to appear with all three leads, is caught between a mod Mata Hari and an "immod impression of Paula Prentiss." So what's left except to leave the magazine, marry Rock Hudson, and start solving murders? Maybe they should have hired her to run the crime magazine.

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Saturday's highlights belong firmly in the late-night hours, with a trio of classics to satisfy any movie lover's tastes, beginning with The High and the Mighty (11:15 p.m. PT, KXTV in Sacramento), the original airliner-in-jeopardy movie, starring John Wayne, Robert Stack, Claire Trevor, and Laraine Day, and capped by a memorable score from Dimitri Tiomkin. At 11:30 p.m., it's one of the great political melodramas of all time, All the King's Men (KGO in San Francisco), Robert Penn Warren's gothic horror show that won Oscars for Broderick Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge, as well as taking Best Picture. And early Sunday morning, it's the original Cat People (1:50 a.m., KPIX in San Francisco), Jacques Tournier's classic starring Simone Simon and Kent Smith.

Sunday starts off with perhaps the most meaningless professional football game this side of preseason, the Bert Bell Memorial, also known as the NFL Play-Off Bowl (10:30 a.m., CBS), featuring the second-place teams from the Eastern and Western conferences, playing essentially to determine who finishes in third place in the league. If common sense hadn't ended this game, the players' association most certainly would have. On Firing Line (7:00 p.m., KQED in San Francisco), William F. Buckley Jr. and heart transplant surgeon Dr. Christiaan Barnard discuss whether or not moral and theological considerations should influence medical decisions, a topic that continues to be hotly debated today. And at 10:00 p.m., it's the premiere of the comedy-crime series My Friend Tony (NBC), a show I can honestly say I'd never heard of until I saw the opening credits for it on FredFlix a few years ago. One episode, which I wasn't able to watch all the way through, was enough for me to understand why I'd never heard of it; James Whitmore stars as a crime-fighting criminology professor, while Enzo Ceruico plays Tony, the young man he met in Italy during the war, who assists him in the field. It runs for 16 episodes, so catch it while you can.

On an otherwise undistinguished Monday, we'll recall a little-remembered soap opera named Hidden Faces, a "daytime drama" now in its second week (noon, NBC) that could easily be mistaken for a game show based on the title. ("Players try to uncover a hidden celebrity's visage by solving clues!" See how easy it would be?) Debuting on December 30, 1968, it runs until June 27, 1969, so catch it while—wait, I used that one already, didn't I?

We've got dueling newsmagazines on Tuesday, beginning with the premiere of First Tuesday (9:00 p.m.), one of NBC's many efforts over the years, hosted by Sander Vanocur. The show's title says it all: it airs on the first Tuesday of each month. Tonight's episode includes an interview with strongman Charles Atlas, who will see to it that no beach bully kicks sand in your face. Going up against the second hour of that two-hour program is the granddaddy of fthem all, 60 Minutes (10:00 p.m., CBS), which at this point is still shown on a twice-monthly basis. This week's edition includes a behind-the-scenes look at television comedy, and an interview with vice-president elect Spiro Agnew. 

Back to the movies on Wednesday, with the television premiere of Otto Preminger's suspense thriller Bunny Lake Is Missing (9:00 p.m., ABC), starring Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Lauirence Olivier, and Noel Coward. Judith Crist describes it as "long on gimmicks and short on logic," but this story of a missing child—who may or may not even exist—provides plenty of mystery. Perhaps more straightforward is this week's Green Acres (9:30 p.m., CBS), which details Oliver's headaches when he tries to introduce chicken-raising to the farm. If you think this will go well, you don't know Green Acres. 

On Thursday, Ironside (8:30 p.m., NBC) takes on drug use, when Eve's niece is busted on a drug charge. Later, Les Crane talks about drug rehab (9:30 p.m., KNEW in San Francisco), with representatives of the controversial organization Synanon, which later turned into a religious cult, and (according to the always-reliable Wikipedia) disbanded in 1991 after several members were convicted of offenses including financial misdeeds, evidence tampering, terrorism, and attempted murder. And Orson Welles is among Dean Martin's guests (10:00 p.m., NBC); the brain behind Citizen Kane offers a humorous song, and joins Dean in comic vignettes aimed at American tourists in Paris. On the lighter side, ABC preempts its regular programming for a one-hour music special called This Is Tom Jones (7:30 p.m.). Don't be surprised to see this become part of ABC's regular schedule.

Among Friday's highlights is the memorable Star Trek episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" (10:00 p.m., NBC), an allegory about racial strife, starring Frank Gorshin and Lou Antonio as the half-white, half-black combatants. Like many Trek episodes, it's a bit heavy-handed in making its point, but it remains one of the best-remembered stories of the series, and there's nothing wrong with the moral of the story. Better, perhaps, is an episode of Judd for the Defense (10:00 p.m., ABC), dealing with the mental capacity of a young woman on trial for murder. She's already pleaded guilty, and may well be: the question is, considering her diminished capacity, should she face life in prison or have a chance at being cured?

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One of Wednesday's shows is Hawaii Five-O, and so we'd be remiss if we didn't mention Leslie Raddatz's profile of Jack Lord, who has come a long way from the rodeo circuit of Stoney Burke (an underrated series, in my opinion) to the beaches of Hawaii. 

Lord has long referred to his admiration for his idol, Gary Cooper. However, while he boasts a lifestyle far removed from Cooper's (including "a 30-foot long, 16,000-pound, all-steel mobile dressing room, decorated by his wife and complete with |bedroom, kitchen, bath, make-up area, stereo, two air-conditioners and a self-contained water purifier"), Raddatz supposes that Cooper may not have had to work as hard, either. The Five-O crew often puts in 18-hour days, six days a week, utilizing as many as five different locations daily. The permanent sets, including McGarrett's and the governor's offices, are not soundproof, and often shooting is interrupted by the sound of rain on metal roofs, the rumble of passing trucks and planes flying overhead, and actual shooting from a nearby rifle range. Ah, well, nobody ever said stardom was easy.

Lord was not the first choice for the role of Five-O head McGarrett; as producer Leonard Freeman recounts, "You always start with Gregory Peck. Who knows? You might call him up and he’d feel like doing a television series that day." Neither, however, was Lord at the bottom of the pile. He and Freeman had worked together on an unsold pilot, and Freeman says of Lord that "He’s terrific. I'm a perfectionist, and so is he. Having a star like Jack is like having money in the bank. He’s always on time, no bags under his eyes, and he always knows his lines." He also projects the gravitas necessary to make viewers buy in; "When he flashes his badge, people believe it."

For Lord, who takes both himself and his work seriously, it's been a long haul to the top. He is a painter (the Metropolitan Museum of Art owns five of his works done when he was 18 years old) and can recite poetry at the drop of a hat (his father would give the five children a penny for every line of poetry they memorized). He's also sensitive and vulnerable, and still resents an article from years ago (which I think was in TV Guide, actually) that suggested he visualized himself as a second Cooper. He and Cooper had been friends until the latter's death, but Lord denies he ever had "illusions of filling his idol’s boots." And Lord has no need of such lofty dreams today, given the success of Hawaii Five-O (which will run until 1980, the last series of the 1960s to go off the air), part ownership of the series, and financial security (known as a shrewd businessman, he's not even represented by an agent). Not to mention an apartment at Waikiki. 

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One of our other stories this week looks at the so-called "waist-up" fashion displayed by many female television personalities. The phrase refers to the fact that what these women wear below the waist is generally hidden from viewers, and while this is often true for men as well as women, the article is written by Cindy Adams, which explains why the accent is on the distaff side. Barbara Walters, for example, is often clad in "stunningly attired top half winks and blinks with the regulation three-piece set—earrings, pin and one refined-looking bracelet" while, below the desk, she's wearing sneakers and slacks. Walters remarks that "I live in fear that one of these days the camera will catch me standing up or walking away."

Then, there's the story of Nancy Dickerson, one of NBC's most prominent correspondents and anchor of the network's five-minute morning news update. Her wardrobe consists mostly of "double-breasted lapel suits with turtle-necked blouses. The fabrics and colors vary but seldom 'the look, since she considers it her most flattering." As proof of this, Adams flashes back to last July 5, when Dickerson, following her newscast, headed off to the hospital to give birth the next day to a bouncing baby boy. Not a single viewer even suspected she was pregnant. A similar story applies to ABC's Marlene Sanders, who continued to do the news even after she'd severed her Achilles' tendon, leaving her to hobble around in a cast for several weeks. On air, she was cool, calm, and authoritative. "Meanwhile, back at the studio, her crutches were stacked against a wall and her leg was propped up on a chair off to the right." Pauline Frederick, reporting for NBC from the United Nations during the Six-Day War, couldn't even wait for her clothes to be cleaned, and so raced to Saks and grabbed something that had a good neckline but was too large. Said Frederick, "I’ll have it altered when the war’s over." 

I recall Peter Jennings talking about this kind of thing many years ago. Long considered one of the best-dressed men on television, he explained that he often wore inexpensive suits bought off the rack, and plain shirts. However, when combined with a pocket hanky and cufflinks, it made all the difference. The moral, according to Jennings: use that hanky, and you've got it made. Hey, works for me.

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Speaking of the news, as we can see this week, there's more than one way to look at it:

At least Fox News's advertisements weren't quite this blatant. 

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MST3K alert: Attack from Space (Japanese; 1964). Spies from the planet Sapphire force a Japanese scientist to aid them in their plans for invading earth. Ken Utsui, Junko Ikeuchi. (Sunday, 11:30 a.m., KCRA in Sacramento) Another less-than-classic from Rifftrax, featuring a not-so-heroic figure named Starman, trying to fight off space aliens from the Death Star by using ordinary guns. Not ray guns, not lasers, just regular guns with bullets in them. Ah, technology is wonderful, isn't it? TV

If you enjoy the content here and want to support my broader creative work, please consider making a donation at my Ko-fi page. Any amount you contribute helps me continue writing, researching, and sharing these articles and projects. Thank you!